Hverdagslykke!

 By Lighttruth

Hverdagslykke - Norwegian for “everyday happiness”. They also have a word for “work happiness”- Arbeidsglede - literally “working joy” - are you feeling that today? If not, and especially if you rarely do, you can check out nef consulting’s well-being at work tool!

Anyway, why am I giving a lesson in one of the more obscure European languages? As I am sure you noticed on Monday it was World Mental Health day... only you probably didn’t notice as in the UK we simply do not take people’s mental health seriously enough. However the same is not true in Scandinavia, and particularly Norway. It was front page news of all the newspapers and one of the national TV stations is dedicating the whole week to improving your Hverdaglykke.

Now why am I telling you this? Well it so happens that I have friends in Norway and a few months ago they set me up a meeting with the Norwegian Council for Mental Health. They shared their work on a report they were producing on 63 tips for happiness promoting activities and I shared with them our ‘Five ways to well-being’. The five ways are the well-being equivalent of your five fruit and vegetables a day and, in case you don’t know them, are: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give (or as they say in Norwegian: Knytt Bånd, Vær Activ, Vær Oppmerkson, Forsett å Lære & Gi). It was a nice friendly meeting and I didn’t really think much more about it – excepting that 63 is a lot activities to try and communicate to the general public!

So it was a bit of a surprise as my friend (pictured here on Norwegian TV) emailed me yesterday to say that the Five Ways to Well-being are all over the Norwegian newspapers. She herself had been interviewed on national TV about them as well as quoted in many of the major newspapers. It seems that the Norwegian media have discovered our five ways – with one TV programme running a feature on each day this week on one of the five ways. This is something that we have found interesting about the five ways – they are contagious – and in another recent report we found over 80 different examples of how they are being used in local projects in the UK. 

So here’s to your everyday happiness and may you find ways to promote it.

Ha det!

(Literally: ‘have it’ but used to mean bye)